In object-based video compression, video segmentation for detecting and tracking video objects, as well as in other types of object-oriented video processing, the input video is separated into two streams. One stream contains the information representing stationary background information, and the other stream contains information representing the moving portions of the video, to be denoted as foreground information. The background information is represented as a background model, including a scene model, i.e., a composite image composed from a series of related images, as, for example, one would find in a sequence of video frames; the background model may also contain additional models and modeling information. Scene models are generated by aligning images (for example, by matching points and/or regions) and determining overlap among them; generation of scene models is discussed in further depth in commonly-assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/472,162, filed Dec. 27, 1999, and Ser. No. 09/609,919, filed Jul. 3, 2000, both incorporated by reference in their entireties herein. In an efficient transmission or storage scheme, the scene model need be transmitted only once, while the foreground information is transmitted for each frame. For example, in the case of an observer (i.e., camera or the like, which is the source of the video) that undergoes only pan, tilt, roll, and zoom types of motion, the scene model need be transmitted only once because the appearance of the scene model does not change from frame to frame, except in a well-defined way based on the observer motion, which can be easily accounted for by transmitting motion parameters. Note that such techniques are also applicable in the case of other forms of motion, besides pan, tilt, roll, and zoom. In IVS systems, the creation of distinct moving foreground and background objects allows the system to attempt classification on the moving objects of interest, even when the background pixels may be undergoing apparent motion due to pan, tilt and zoom motion of the camera.
To make automatic object-oriented video processing feasible, it is necessary to be able to distinguish the regions in the video sequence that are moving or changing and to separate (i.e., segment) them from the stationary background regions. This segmentation must be performed in the presence of apparent motion, for example, as would be induced by a panning, tilting, rolling, and/or zooming observer (or due to other motion-related phenomena, including actual observer motion). To account for this motion, images are first aligned; that is, corresponding locations in the images (i.e., frames) are determined, as discussed above. After this alignment, objects that are truly moving or changing, relative to the stationary background, can be segmented from the stationary objects in the scene. The stationary regions are then used to create (or to update) the scene model, and the moving foreground objects are identified for each frame.
It is not an easy thing to identify and automatically distinguish between video objects that are moving foreground and stationary background, particularly in the presence of observer motion, as discussed above. Furthermore, to provide the maximum degree of compression or the maximum fineness or accuracy of other video processing techniques, it is desirable to segment foreground objects as finely as possible; this enables, for example, the maintenance of smoothness between successive video frames and crispness within individual frames. Known techniques have proven, however, to be difficult to utilize and inaccurate for small foreground objects and have required excessive processing power and memory. It would, therefore, be desirable to have a technique that permits accurate segmentation between the foreground and background information and accurate, crisp representations of the foreground objects, without the limitations of prior techniques.